Episode 46: What’s an Enemy, Anyway?
This week, we take a look at a couple of bizarre rules twists in 6th edition. First: when it comes to allies of convenience, is the enemy of your enemy truly your friend? Or can things go horribly wrong in combat and when holding objectives? Second: who does that gun emplacement really belong to, anyway? And can you even really attack it? Listen as we wrestle with this mental puzzles and try to figure out what the correct answer is. Do we need yet another FAQ to eliminate these gray areas? Also, we take a look at GW’s recent legal action against a seemingly-unrelated sci-fi novel. Was GW in the right? Was it a dick move? Was it both? All this, and hobby progress too, on this episode of Preferred Enemies.
Links:
Cheese Hunters: Allies of Convenience Super Cheese
40K Rules Conundrum: About That Quad Gun…
Music: “Frets of Fury“, remixed by vertexguy. Music courtesy of Overclocked Remix
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One Reply to “Episode 46: What’s an Enemy, Anyway?”
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Trademark law is really complicated so here’s a few things:
1. You can apply for a trademark on a term and it will generally be granted as long as nobody else has applied for the term in the same field of use. Having a trademark is not the same thing as enforcing it though, so receiving a trademark does NOT mean it is valid, it just means nobody else had applied for that mark in your field of business before. Also, trademarks are NOT case sensitive.
2. There are limits on what terms you can protect and the degree to which you can stop “competitors” from using them. There is a heirarchy of marks as follows:
Fanciful – this is the easiest to protect of all trademarks, its for terms that you make up. They have no real world meaning.
Arbitrary – these are common words that have no meaning within the context that you do business, so, think Windows for computers.
Suggestive – these are phrases that suggest an idea that relates to your product or service, but isn’t directly descriptive of the product or service.
Descriptive – this is the weakest level of enforceable trademark, its a term that is literally just describes what the product or service is. You’ll have a massive uphill battle defending a mark that is just a description of what your product is. This is where the term “space marine” falls.
Then there are generic terms, which cannot be trademarked under any circumstances.
3. Trademark is different from copyright, you do have to enforce your rights to retain them.
So, clearly the best case scenario would be someone providing pro-bono legal aid to MCA Hogarth and this going to court, because I have to imagine that Space Marine would be found to be a generic term, and even if not that it would be extremely difficult for GW to enforce the mark. The term should be taken away from them because it is clearly a generic term for an elite interplanetary military force. Here’s hoping!